


wish granted

by ezlybored



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/F, all the way through
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:37:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5334344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ezlybored/pseuds/ezlybored
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>”You shall meet your match. An annoying shrill of a girl. One who truly challenges you.”</p><p>Laura thinks about what Tythia said.</p><p>(based off a theory i saw on tumblr. the idea held on and didn't let go and now here we are.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	wish granted

_”You shall meet your match. An annoying shrill of a girl. One who truly challenges you.”_

How incredibly _ridiculous_. Carmilla was fairly certain--no, completely certain--that she’d never heard any statement composed of more bullshit than that nonsense the fairy queen had spouted out. At least the farce of a mystery was over and done with now, supernatural shenanigans ended, the Dean no longer trapped in her office with cement shoes. She could forget all about fairy queens and dudebros-turned-animals and missing periods.

(Actually, thinking about it, the missing periods wouldn’t be easy to forget. They probably weren’t going to be forgotten for a while.)

Her ‘match.’ The word, the idea of the word, made her throw up in her mouth a little. There were so many issues with her supposed ‘fondest wish’ she didn’t know where to start. Really, who described your soulmate as an ‘annoying shrill’?

It was only a matter of seconds after she left the room that Laura Hollis stepped in, out of nowhere. As if she had just come into existence. As if something had led her there.

*~*~*~*

The idea of being Carmilla’s ‘match,’ like they were destined for each other, meant for each other, was one that might’ve appealed to Laura before. Before _everything_ , before Vordenberg, before Mattie, back when they were a ‘they’. A single cohesive unit, one with the other, Carmilla and Laura, Laura and Carmilla. When love could conquer everything, could change a monster into the hero of the story. If Laura had seen the tapes then, her little romantic heart would have just eaten it up. 

But all it did was renew her heartache all over again. How bad did things have to go, that you and your soulmate would meet each other, would fall in love, and then… fall apart? How much did life have to screw you over for a fairy queen’s magic to fall short? How much had Laura screwed up?

Even without the new knowledge, it was bad enough. Just the two of them were there, alone, and they joked and smiled and Carmilla responded as well as could be expected to Laura’s teasing. Something was missing. Though in the moment they could wash off their troubles, all their mistakes and heartbreak, everything was still--

Like a barrier keeping them just that far apart. Like a hand curling around Laura’s heart, already delicate and bruised, and tugging backwards until her chest was aching and her breathing came hard and there was a feeling in her stomach like falling. Like a sign in a museum: Look, don’t touch.

You don’t want to damage the works of art any more than they already are.

And if Carmilla was art--which she was, breathtaking despite the flecks of paint missing, painted in strong strokes, a timeless beauty--then what was Laura? She was supposed to be a restorer, supposed to _challenge_ Carmilla so she could grow and become more vivid and gorgeous than she had ever been before. Instead her clumsy, inexperienced hands had only further damaged the piece until it was sealed away in a glass cage. Look, don’t touch.

Even as Laura thought this, she realized it was just another example of the problem that had separated them in the first place. Idiot. Carmilla wasn’t a painting, something intangible and inhuman. She was real, she was broken, and just as flawed as Laura was. It wasn’t hard to understand, she’d seen her angry and bitter and terrible. Laura had hated her at the start. But she’d also seen her glorious and shining and heroic and Carmilla shone so bright that Laura forgot there was a darkness behind that light.

 _She was your hero, and what did you ever do?_ Laura asked herself bitterly. _Killed her sister, betrayed her trust, gave the campus over to Vordenberg. One hell of a ‘match’ you were._

 _Are. You are her ‘match.’_ But Laura couldn’t really find it in herself to believe that she had a chance anymore. Not the way things were. Not with Danny and Mattie dead, not with Perry and JP who knows where and LaF somewhere else in the library and everything a mess. Thinking of herself as Carmilla’s match brought a sickening feeling, a bitter taste into her mouth. 

“Hey.” Carmilla’s voice burst into Laura’s head and startled her out of her thoughts. She was bent at the waist to get a little closer to Laura’s level seated on the floor, but it still felt like she was miles above. Her dark hair spilled over her shoulder and down her back, glossy and elegant, the angle of her jaw frankly obscene. It _hurt,_ because Laura still loved her, was still in love with her, but…

“You okay there? If you don’t rush ahead this time, I think I figured out which way to go.” ...but, right now, they weren’t ‘them.’ Carmilla and Laura were separate. Not lock and key, not the perfect match. Just two people trying to figure things out in an incredibly messed up world.

“Yeah, I’m… fine.” Maybe she nodded a little too enthusiastically, but Carmilla didn’t seem to notice when Laura stood up in a hurry and brushed off her pants. “So, lead on.” She gestured dramatically in the direction Carmilla had just come from. Carmilla looked amused at her awkwardness, straightening.

Just as she was beginning to turn around and start walking, she stopped and added an afterthought. “And I meant it when I said no running ahead. I know you’re eager, but would it kill you to slow down and think for a minute?” 

“Look, how was I supposed to know what was around that corner?”

“You _don’t_ , that’s why you don’t run around the corner at full speed.”

*~*~*~*

Different times felt like different worlds. Before was a solar system away, an unreachable planet spinning somewhere out there where Laura couldn’t go back. Beautiful and untouchable. Now was inescapable, ensnaring. Everywhere she turned she was faced with some blank reminder that now was now, that everything that had happened had really happened. Similarly, After was inconceivable. 

What would she do after everything was over? What _could_ she do after? Go back home? “Hey dad, so the college I was going to turned out to be really supernatural and got wrecked as a result of all that supernatural freakiness, good thing I had some backups planned, right?” Yeah, that would go over well. And if she had Carmilla with her… “By the way, this is my girlfriend Carmilla. Don’t drink her soy milk.”

If she didn’t have Carmilla with her--the thought was ice in her veins, cold and piercing. Without Carmilla… if she went home without Carmilla… had she accomplished anything?

God, it sounded so pitiful and selfish, but although she knew at the moment their relationship wasn’t--just _wasn’t_ \--if she didn’t make it out of this mess without Carmilla then she might as well have not made it at all. They weren’t a single unit anymore, but nonetheless Laura was hopelessly caught up and entangled in the wonder that was Carmilla Karnstein. Ever since she’d met her, everything and everyone else had faded and blurred until they barely felt real anymore. It should scare her how much Carmilla had become her life, as if she was always meant to be Laura’s life. Her match.

That was what it was like to be nineteen and hopelessly in love. This, this was what it was like to be nineteen, hopelessly in love with someone who ought to be your soulmate, and a complete _fuckup._

If Carmilla wouldn’t come home with Laura, then she supposed she’d have to follow her; if Carm would let her in the first place. She could always say no, after all, and Laura… she couldn’t force her company on Carmilla. So if Carmilla said no she would just have to try and make do. Pick herself back up and piece herself back together. Move on, move forward.

But without Carmilla, there was no forward to move on to.

Laura regretted insisting on watching those tapes. If she’d never heard that, if she’d stayed blissfully unaware of the reality of what she and Carmilla were to each other, she wouldn’t be thinking about this and hating herself for her mistakes like she was. _It’s not like I wasn’t doing it anyway,_ she realized. Even if she’d never watched the tapes, she was still Carmilla’s match. She still failed.  
The new information hadn’t changed anything core, only illuminated what was already there. Laura technically wasn’t supposed to be in the basement she stumbled into on her tour of Silas, but she went there for some reason beyond her. At the time she thought it was just luck, but it wasn’t just that, she knew now. Tythia had brought her there. Tythia had brought her and Carmilla together, because that was Carmilla’s _wish,_ her ‘match.’

Yet, at the same time, more questions were raised. Without Tythia’s intervention, what would have happened? Would Laura have gone to another college? Would she and Carmilla lived their whole lives never knowing each other, never meeting? 

If Tythia could change a person entirely with no effort, could she create a person solely for a wish?

Laura was Carmilla’s match. Everything in her life had led up to the point where she had met Carmilla, fallen in love… everything apart from Carmilla had faded and blurred. 

Laura was only ever Carmilla’s match.

The world was spinning around her as the gears in Laura’s mind began working furiously. _No, no, it’s not possible,_ she told herself, just as another part of her screamed that _it makes too much sense to not be true, prove it wrong._ Her hands were cold, numb; she shivered despite herself.

How could she prove it wrong? She hadn’t seen her father in so long, but was that the reason his face wasn’t entirely clear in her mind’s eye? She remembered vaguely the names of the other colleges she’d looked at but why she wanted to go to them, what their responses were, blurred and shifted and confused themselves in her mind. No. _No no no no no._ Her high school… Laura hadn’t been much of anybody in her high school. Sure, she was Laura, but she didn’t stand out that much and wasn’t that popular and she couldn’t remember the names of any of her teachers.

Why was her dad so overprotective? When had she taken those self-defense classes? She couldn’t remember clearly, just knew that somehow the skills had come up when she was in danger.

Almost distantly, Laura realized her head was in her hands and she was breathing heavily, eyes wide. She felt almost on the verge of crying, or throwing up, or both, her tongue heavy with a bitter taste, her vision blurring. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Laura couldn’t exist just to be Carmilla’s match, just because of a stupid fairy queen. She was her own person outside of Carmilla, and yet…

Once she had met her, Carmilla was… everything.

They had fallen in love so perfectly, matched like they were meant to be together. Like they were made for each other.

Like Laura was made specifically for Carmilla by a fucking fairy queen. And yet she’d _failed._

If she was made for one single purpose, what happened when she failed to fulfill that? Did she just live out the rest of her days like any other human? Was that too good for someone like her? No, it had to be worse, it could always be worse.

Laura lifted her head as the first tear fell and sniffled pathetically. Her hands were shaking as she looked down at them, but they didn’t feel like her hands. She was disconnected from herself, numb to her own body. Pointless.

*~*~*~*

“Cupcake,” Carmilla called into the distance. There was no response but a faint echo of her own voice repeating back at her. Laura might have fallen asleep or something. She hadn’t been gone for that long, but to be fair, she had no idea what time it was and they had been doing a lot of wandering around. “Did you fall asleep?”

Something about the silence unnerved her, though she wasn’t entirely sure what. Moving her cargo of snacks to be tucked beneath one arm, Carmilla sped up a little as she made her way back to where she’d left Laura. As she peeked around the corner, she saw no one there.

“...Laura?”

The room was empty, cold. Even though Carmilla couldn’t see anything off--maybe Laura had wandered off, she wouldn’t put it past her--she felt unsettled.

After taking another look around the room, she realized something. 

There was only one exit, and she hadn’t heard any footsteps.

**Author's Note:**

> That's the thing about wishes; it's all in the wording. Tythia only said Carmilla and Laura would meet. She never promised what would happen after that.


End file.
